overawe

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See also: over-awe

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From over- +‎ awe.

Pronunciation

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Verb

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overawe (third-person singular simple present overawes, present participle overawing, simple past and past participle overawed)

  1. (transitive) To restrain, subdue, or control by awe; to cow. [from 16th c.]
    • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies [] (First Folio), London: [] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):
      None doe you like, but an effeminate Prince, Whom like a Schoole-boy you may ouer-awe.
    • 1849, Herman Melville, “ch. 57”, in Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, volume I:
      His free and easy carriage evinced, that though acknowledging my assumptions, he was no way overawed by them; treating me as familiarly, indeed, as if I were a mere mortal, one of the abject generation of mushrooms.
    • 2000, Alasdair Gray, The Book of Prefaces, Bloomsbury, published 2002, page 61:
      He kept the biggest estates, and where he lacked troops to overawe the natives he evicted the natives and made a game reserve.

Antonyms

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Translations

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